Future graphics

BobXP · Post by **BobXP** » 28 Mar 2004 19:05

Interesting...

dominik81 · Post by **dominik81** » 31 Mar 2004 06:59

I vote in favor of PNG and MNG. It has great compression, is easily editable for everyone and (MNG) supports animation directly.

Villem · Post by **Villem** » 31 Mar 2004 13:07

dominik81 wrote:I vote in favor of PNG and MNG. It has great compression, is easily editable for everyone and (MNG) supports animation directly.

I agree.

eobet · Post by **eobet** » 07 Apr 2004 17:01

Man, I just got registered and am downloading the game right now, so I'm kinda hyped, up in steam, going strong, pumped (and yeah, dude, stuff like that).

I actually love the graphics of the original game, and loathe the graphics of Rollercoaster Tycoon, and what have been shown from Locomotion so far.

A few days ago, I wrote Chris Sawyer (or... I'd like to think the mail reached him anyway) and basically told him that. No answer, of course.

Since I didn't see anyone giving actual examples on how they'd like a possibile graphical update to look, let me attach the picture I sent in my mail to Mr. Sawyer here as well. To the left is a jpg from the Gamespot preview of Locomotion, and to the right is my interpretation of how I think it should look (ie. blend of "photo realism" and the old pixel style of TT):

One thing I wrote about was so called "pixel hunting", where you spent ages looking for small details in all the different houses in the game (and loving every minute of it).

Because of this, I believe that pre-rendered graphics totally ruins the game! It takes away personality, detail and warmth. Also, anti-aliased graphics often require two pixels width to describe something, instead of one, due to approximation of details ending up between pixels.

Anyway, perhaps you already discussed this in the thread... as I said, I'm all fired up, the game has now downloaded and I'm going to play my socks off until I fall asleep at the keyboard (and then have the world's longest workday tomorrow, until I get home, I bet... but then again, I design icons for a living, so maybe I can sneak in a few houses, nyehehe).

So, I better stop writing now. Check back later![/img]

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 07 Apr 2004 17:08

eobet, if you're starting to play TTD again, don't forget to get:
- TTDXC (Configurator)
- Most recent Patch alpha
- All the new graphics from the ttdpatch.net site

Then you'll be ready to play with the even newer graphics when they're released.

dominik81 · Post by **dominik81** » 07 Apr 2004 17:30

krtaylor wrote:eobet, if you're starting to play TTD again, don't forget to get:
- TTDXC (Configurator)
- Most recent Patch alpha
- All the new graphics from the ttdpatch.net site

I think he's actually talking about OpenTTD, not TTD.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 07 Apr 2004 17:33

Oh. Well then, don't worry about it.

Tyrell · Post by **Tyrell** » 08 Apr 2004 03:19

Just a vague idea based on personal interest.
extended game pallette possibilities ?
(probably unpractical, and to vague)

eobet · Post by **eobet** » 08 Apr 2004 08:53

Palette? OpenTTD isn't such an exact implementation that it's restricted to 256 colors, is it? That should have been eliminated, since it's a lesser thing than moving from Assembler to C...

Bjarni · Post by **Bjarni** » 08 Apr 2004 09:48

Currently, there is talk about skipping the current 8 bit colors in favor of something better. It will most likely be 16 bit colors as they are the easiest to implement, but there have been talk about 24 and 32 bits as well, so we don't know for sure until we have it. The only thing, that is for sure, is that nobody wants to keep the 8 bit graphics

Villem · Post by **Villem** » 08 Apr 2004 10:07

Your forgetting that it would also need switch to get back to 8bit(Memory Usage is increased, Mp even would be more unstable. Even Anno1503 couldnt implement multiplayer and they got 24 or 32 bit graphics if im right). People with Not-So Advanced Computers should have a option for 8bit if people add 16bit(well theres source code avaible, if ya want 16bit right now ya can add it yourself to)

MagicBuzz · Post by **MagicBuzz** » 08 Apr 2004 10:10

I think the better way should be working with 32 bits colors, because there is not any limitation.
But, in a graphic package, it should be nice to have a 8 bits palette based version, because some users should use 8 bits (Linux doesn't always support correctly all graphic cards by exemple)

Futhermore, 32 bits color is nice, because it allows you to create 8 bits levels of transparency, that should be a very nice feature for next versions (smooth smoke, smog on big cities, etc.)

eobet · Post by **eobet** » 08 Apr 2004 11:23

So SDL actually initializes an 8-bit display? That's ridiculus! 101% of the people playing OpenTTD must surely be using at least a 16-bit display?

And if not, downlsampling is provided via SDL anyway!

However, I do not think the current (original) graphics are bad at all! I think they are absolutely great, and I even consider the newer Rollercoaster Tycoon and Locomotion graphics to be ugly! (Yeah, I already wrote it above, but I feel quite strongly about this... pre-rendered graphics take away personality and detail!)

Oh, and the graphics having anything to do with multiplayer is also ridiculus. The Anno 1503 AD people are just poor programmers. I mean, otherwise, the 3D MMORPG people must have godly coding skills?

Noway, 16-bit 2D graphics will have absolutely no impact on gaming speed.

32-bit graphics with an 8-bit alpha channel, however probably will.

Bjarni · Post by **Bjarni** » 08 Apr 2004 11:45

The reason why OTTD uses a 8 bit palette is TTD is programmed for a 8 bit palette. It is not by choice by the currently developers

The problem is that a new graphic engine needs to import old grf files or need new grf files

Villem · Post by **Villem** » 08 Apr 2004 11:51

eobet wrote:So SDL actually initializes an 8-bit display? That's ridiculus! 101% of the people playing OpenTTD must surely be using at least a 16-bit display?

And if not, downlsampling is provided via SDL anyway!

However, I do not think the current (original) graphics are bad at all! I think they are absolutely great, and I even consider the newer Rollercoaster Tycoon and Locomotion graphics to be ugly! (Yeah, I already wrote it above, but I feel quite strongly about this... pre-rendered graphics take away personality and detail!)

Oh, and the graphics having anything to do with multiplayer is also ridiculus. The Anno 1503 AD people are just poor programmers. I mean, otherwise, the 3D MMORPG people must have godly coding skills?

Noway, 16-bit 2D graphics will have absolutely no impact on gaming speed.

32-bit graphics with an 8-bit alpha channel, however probably will.

Displaying Graphics Consumes Memory, And more complex the graphic is the more memory is consumed. Anno1503 Makers are no way poor progmammers, but if you want multiplayer with more than 2 players without huge "A-Sync" problem. When machine is slowed down by 50-100% or even 25%, there is gona be synchronization problems with other clients, and its gona cause A Sync Error wich seperates the games.

CobraA1 · Post by **CobraA1** » 08 Apr 2004 16:06

It will most likely be 16 bit colors as they are the easiest to implement

Why is it any "easier" to implement than 32 bit? Quite the contrary, it generally requires bit manipulation because it's not aligned to bytes like 24 and 32 bit color is!

And all this talk about memory and speed . . .

First of all, I say make different options available, then people with lower end computers can still play OpenTTD.

But most people today have graphics cards that are perfectly capable of 24/32 bit color, so using 32 bit won't actually make any difference as far as speed goes. It might actually be faster because the video card isn't doing any color conversion.

The final speed depends heavily on the user's video card - I would not count on a single color mode to be the fastest!

Bjarni · Post by **Bjarni** » 08 Apr 2004 16:24

CobraA1 wrote:
It will most likely be 16 bit colors as they are the easiest to implement
Why is it any "easier" to implement than 32 bit? Quite the contrary, it generally requires bit manipulation because it's not aligned to bytes like 24 and 32 bit color is!

Aligning to bytes is 2^n, which means: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 (who wants 64 bit graphic

You will not get it)
16 bit are 2 bytes
24 bit are 3 bytes
32 bit are 4 bytes

that makes 24 bit the hardest to implement

KhanRKerensky · Post by **KhanRKerensky** » 08 Apr 2004 16:40

Bjarni wrote:
CobraA1 wrote:
It will most likely be 16 bit colors as they are the easiest to implement
Why is it any "easier" to implement than 32 bit? Quite the contrary, it generally requires bit manipulation because it's not aligned to bytes like 24 and 32 bit color is!
Aligning to bytes is 2^n, which means: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 (who wants 64 bit graphic :P You will not get it)
16 bit are 2 bytes
24 bit are 3 bytes
32 bit are 4 bytes

that makes 24 bit the hardest to implement

I think he means the tree subcolors.
16Bit: 5R6G5B or 5R5G5B1A
With 24 bit you have one byte per color: 8R8G8B and 32bit has 8 additional bits for alpha: 8R8G8B8A

CobraA1 · Post by **CobraA1** » 08 Apr 2004 16:48

Correction: in 16-bit color, each color takes 5 bits, and is not aligned to character boundaries.

Compare this to 24 and 32-bit color, where each color is 8 bits - a byte, so they are aligned to character boundaries. It takes more bit manipulation to extract the individual colors. In 24 and 32-bit color, you just grab a byte.

You've got to learn to think like a computer

. Manipulating 8 bits takes only a single instruction. Manipulating 5 bits does not.

The 2^n you refer to is only for how much memory the image takes up, not processor cycles. All Pentiums (maybe even the 386/486?) can handle a 32-bit integer with a single instruction. It's mostly the graphics card that is the limiting factor, and as I've said, many of today's cards handle 32-bit natively.

So, yes, 32-color will take more memory, but today's computers can more than handle the requirements. If you want to support older computers, go ahead and support 16-bit color, I have no problem with it as long as you make 24/32-bit color available for the higher-end users also.

Give them a choice, don't force anything on them. As I stated in big letters - you did read the big letters, didn't you? - it's highly dependent on the graphics card.

Dan · Post by **Dan** » 08 Apr 2004 17:25

I am fine with either 16 or 32 bit graphics (also has 16 colors and 256 colors) on my old TNT2 card for my XPS 500 T series windows 98. My mom's XP only has 16 bit and 32 bit (nothing lower) and no 24 bit for either.

So I say no 24 bit graphics because they are not on most N-Vidia cards, and even windows 98 users should have 32 bit compatibility but still have 8 and 16 bit for even older computers. As far as programming goes I cannot help you there

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